The Fall of Delrin

The fall of Delrin from the Great Bridge is considered by scholars to be one of the pivotal events in Quatrian mytho-history, and is the climax of the infrequently performed, but always treasured, Dark Dance Cycle. The incident is considered the triggering event for the later fall of Abdazon and the ending of the Age of the House of Wealth.

Mere seconds after her fall into the Weeping Waters far, far below, the woodsman Elum and Lux, his owl, dove off the Great Bridge in after her. Meanwhile, the magician Morbat hurled curses at Delroy, her father, and against the city of Abdazon, vowing that he would see its ruin for having deprived him of his rightful prize, his marriage to Delrin.

Though startled at having lost her footing and slipped from the rocky cliffs, Delrin experienced the actual fall itself in a state of preternatural calm. A quiet suffused her being throughout, and she had the sensation of suspension, of slowing down so much that she was no longer falling, but possibly hovering.

The wind seemed to whisper to her, and she heard a voice boom out, as if resonating inwardly.

“Come, my child.”

And the next thing she knew, she was standing in a dark space, on her two feet, lightly misted still from the vapor of the giant waterfall by rights into which she should have now fallen to her death. Was she dead?

She held up her hands to examine them, and found that they glowed slightly.

Elum, whose own fall lagged several seconds behind hers, was far enough away that he had unwittingly lost sight of her amidst the mists and vapors of the Weeping Waters. He was effectively falling blindly, but for Lux who trailed him at a near distance, just out of hand. The rigor of her senses was somewhat greater, a creature whose lineage spoke the language of aerial dives from high altitudes to track small moving targets since time immemorial. And she too lost sight of Delrin in her fall. But she saw where she went: a slight rend opened in the veil of the mists, and Delrin passed bodily in, before it closed back up again.

Though Lux was a creature of free fall, Elum was not. At least not in air. His line came, in truth, from the ancient Buorthern mariners who had settled the land now called Quatria before it had any name. They were seafarers, and fortunately, they were divers too. To these old-paths, Elum linked himself on the canals of light, and felt their somatic memories flood his body, his sensations, his skin. And as the two, at long last in their fall, neared the waters far below the Great Bridge, Lux found the opportune moment, and bouncing against a slight updraft coming off the falls, swept the shoulder and arm up of Elum in her talons, slowing his fall just enough that he could plunge safely into the waters below. She released him, and he broke the surface of the water like a fish, and went down, down, below.

High above on the Great Bridge, Morbat bore witness to these events, and seethed with anger. His magic enabled him to see into the subtle realms, and he too saw a rend in the veil open, and Delrin pass out of this world into the Hypogeum. Such transits were not normally possible — even for magicians — requiring quite extraordinary circumstances. Seeing such an exception before his very eyes threw him into an explosive rage, and he burst into a cloud of vapor, and streamed over the edge of the Great Bridge, to join with the waters below.

He saw still clearly the light trails of Delrin where she had fallen, and traced it to her point of passage out of this world. He made himself ready, made himself nothing, and slipped in through after her just in time before the trails dissipated, and the rend healed over completely.

He too found himself in darkness, but he knew this place, or at least knew of this cave from legend: the Cave of Unnaming. He unfolded his hands from his robe, and looked down in the darkness at himself. They were skeletal. And the flesh too had fallen from his long animal face, and his long white cloak was threadbare and worn.